Are you a good language learner?

What makes a good language learner? This is an eternal problem, one to which there’s no real solution. The awareness of the success of out-of-classroom learning provides us with a key to how in-classroom learning can be successful. Let us look at the characteristics of a good language learner.

Motivation is certainly going to be very high on the list. Obviously there are different kinds of motivation. There’s what we call instrumental motivation, this is the kind if motivation, which in theory persuades a school pupil to learn a language in order to pass an examination; it is external motivation, something, which is imposed on the learner. The opposite of this is integrative motivation, the kind of motivation which gets an immigrant in a country or someone who’s married to a speaker of another language to master the tongue much more rapidly than someone learning in a classroom.

Arguably, most people possess mixed motivation, although it would appear from research that integrative motivation does give much better results, certainly as far as the speed of learning goes.

Personality is obviously another major factor to be borne in mind. You don’t need to be an extrovert to learn a foreign language, but someone who has the confidence to make mistakes is always going to learn much more quickly than someone who’s afraid to experiment.

Learning skills come next. Learning skills are those abilities which make one person progress at a much faster speed than the others. They include having a good ear, efficient revision, being able to monitor your own speech, suitable organization of learning, generally.

However, if we go back to the starting point suggesting that a much greater number of speakers have learned outside classrooms, it gives us the key to the most important factor, and that’s independence. A learner who frees him or herself from the tyranny of the teacher in the classroom and who makes use of 24 hours a day for learning, who in a word accepts responsibility for learning, is always going to be not just a good language learner, but the best. Conversely, someone, who won’t accept this responsibility, is always going to remain at what we call a plateau. They fail to make progress and blame the teachers. In reality, it is themselves that they should blame.

Exercise 1. Complete the notes below:

The Basic Characteristics of a Good Language Learner:

1) Different types of motivation:

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2) Personality

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3) Learning Skills

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4) Independence

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Дата добавления: 2015-10-26